


You Have All Beginnings While I've Got Ends (That I Didn't Want)

by jungkooksfic



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Anxiety, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Humor, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Inspired by Be More Chill, M/M, Mental Health Issues, No Smut, References to Be More Chill, Social Anxiety, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-17 13:14:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28725693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jungkooksfic/pseuds/jungkooksfic
Summary: Being at the top of the food chain meant that sacrifices had to be made.Dream didn’t know this included his best friend.(Dream breaks himself apart by trying to be popular after years of being invisible. But little does he know that everything he needed was about to be lost.)
Relationships: Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF)
Comments: 20
Kudos: 28





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello-hello!
> 
> I am back with another fic! Please read this note before just to look over the trigger warnings (I really don't want anyone to not be properly warned!)
> 
> While this fic isn't going to be horribly angsty, it's going to take place in late high school, so there will be plenty discussion of plummeting mental health as well as MINOR alcohol use (and drug use but the drug is fictional, so...). 
> 
> *there will be no implied/referenced self harm or su!c!de, however.*
> 
> Do not be fooled, though! This will be an overall funny/fluffy fic.
> 
> This fic is inspired by the musical Be More Chill, I highly recommend giving it a listen just because it's so good, but you won't need to know anything about it to understand the story. Also, all I really remember about the plot is some bootleg of the musical I watched two years ago, so I'll be putting lots of my own twist on it.
> 
> I hope you enjoy this fic!

**_Dream_ **

Life sucked, but at least there was George.

(This was the mindset Dream had adapted to throughout the treacherous years of high school.)

Dream genuinely didn’t think he would’ve survived up to this day, the first day of Senior year, without George’s midnight break-down calls over homework assignments and too-late hours spent on Discord and Minecraft.

In other words, they were best friends.

And that had been enough.

(Foreshadowing.)

So, as the summer days whittled to an end and the looming, final year of high school was creeping closer, Dream hung on to the school-less nights as much as he could with George by his side. More often than not, they’d sleep over at each other’s houses or see each other at least once a day to the point where Dream could just walk into George’s house as if it were his own.

But it wasn’t until he stepped into the school hallway that he had sought to forget over the past few months that he felt truly insignificant. Suddenly, he was a dime in a dozen, nothing more than a blank face in a faceless crowd. People pushed past him without apology and despite being taller than most of them, he felt so, so small.

His mouth felt too dry. His feet felt too big for his shoes. His hands felt too sweaty.

“Hey, watch it, tall-ass!”

In an instant, Dream felt someone shove hard against his back and vault him forward with enough force to make him stumble. And the really sad part was how much the world _hated_ him today because gravity pushed him into the person in front of him.

The most _popular_ person.

Fucking Techno.

Dream didn’t know if Techno was taller (or shorter) than him, but in that moment, he knew he was being looked down upon. He could almost feel the cold wind of Techno’s overbearing shadow be cast upon his own cowering form.

“Hold still,” Techno says, voice monotonous and plain as per usual, eyes looking as if he had seen the ends of the Earth. See, the guy was a huge introvert and overall quiet, so it was something of a miracle that he was so high on the social ladder. But at the same time, everyone, teachers included, was absolutely terrified of him.

(Apparently, one of the scary lesbians referred to him as “actually pretty funny” which was absolutely unheard of, so maybe that was what did it.)

Dream held still as Techno asked him to because he didn’t have an absolute death wish, so when he felt Techno shuffle behind him with absolutely no idea of what was happening, his muscles tensed with fear. As he going to steal his backpack? Punch him in the face? Ridicule him in front of the entire hallway, of which they already had a sizable audience?

Then he heard the uncap of a pen.

_What is he doing?_

“Wash that off and see what happens,” Techno says plainly. As Dream whirled around, his eyes flickered from the uncapped sharpie held in his hands back up to his face, which appeared to be flickering with amusement. Oh, so he wrote on his backpack? What could it possibly say?

So, Dream did what any lifeless senior in high school would do, which is scurry to his locker, gather his necessary books, and escape from the hallway as soon as possible into the bathroom. It had only been five minutes, _five minutes_ without George and he had already been pushed into the most popular guy of their grade and had his backpack defaced. What a wonderful start of the year.

Of course, this was a high school boy’s bathroom so it was absolutely _disgusting,_ but it was better than sitting in his first period math class, alone with the pressure to pick a desk that was neither too close nor too far from the board, but also wouldn’t be getting in the way of any of the friend groups but not ending up sitting next to the kid who tapped their pencil against their chair for the entire hour.

The bathroom would have to do.

Dream decided, as the bathroom door swung open, that he frankly didn’t care that someone else was in here with him, so he decided not to look up and see who it was as he was busy rinsing his face with cold water in the weak attempt to wake _up_ a little until there was a sadly familiar, shrill voice behind him saying,

“Why does it say ‘Boyf’ on your backpack?”

In an instant, Dream whirled around.

There stood Quackity, brows raised, bag slumped on his one shoulder.

See, Quackity and Dream had a long yet anticlimactic history.

Once upon a time, they all were in the same friend group. Quackity, Dream, George, SapNap, Bad. But Quackity decided he was sick of being a loser the summer before junior year, and from there, the friend group deteriorated as Bad kind of just vanished and SapNap moved to Texas. Dream did miss the buzz of being in a big group of friends, but he eventually became content with being alone with George. There was something about it being only the two of them that encouraged a safe atmosphere Dream could just bask in.

But here was Quackity, ex-best friend, standing in the doorway of the disgusting bathroom as if their past was nothing.

High school fucking _sucked._

“It does?” Dream answers plainly as he swivels around to see for himself in the mirror. Surely enough, in big, black, messy sharpie, Techno had written “BOYF” across the lime green fabric. Dream’s brows furrowed. Did it stand for something derogatory? Was it short for something?

“Huh,” he says, turning back around to find some paper towels to dry his face with. He figured there was a little amount of time left that heading to class would be a fine situation as he assumed the conversation was over, yet as Dream was about to leave the bathroom, he watched carefully as Quackity blocked the doorway with his foot.

“You’re kind of a loser, Clay,” Quackity says. Dream flinches. No one really called him that anymore. He didn’t like it much. And the only person who called him that wasn’t in his life, anymore.

“Wow,” Dream mutters, “thanks for the reminder. Don’t remember asking, though.” Dream’s brows raise as he looks from Quackity’s blocking foot back up to his eyes. It was very obvious he was towering over him, and Dream tried to make this as apparent as possible. “Am I excused?”

“Look,” Quackity starts, “I’m not trying to antagonize you. I’m trying to _help.”_

“Uh huh,” Dream responds. He was five seconds from pulling out his phone and checking his Snapchat while he waited for Quackity to finish whatever bullshit he was going to say.

“I used to be, too,” Quackity continues, his hands motioning in the air, “until-”

“Until, what, your balls dropped? Save it, Quackity, I don’t care.” Dream was in the process of stepping over Quackity’s foot and making his way out of that bathroom when he felt a hand clamp over his bicep.

“Until I got a SQUIP.”

Dream raises his brows some more.

A _what_ now?

“A SQUIP,” Dream deadpans.

“Yes. Listen, man, it stands for- Super Quantum Unit Intel Processor and it fuckin’ _slaps,_ dude. It’ll make you popular in no time.”

“What kind of joke is this?” Dream continues. He was convinced that this was some stupid prank, or that Quackity was trying to ridicule him as much as everyone else in the school seemed so hellbent on doing. What for, anyway? All Dream did was exist, and that wound up with his backpack defaced with some bizarre slang he’d never heard of.

“It’s not a joke!” Quackity raises his voice, and for a second, Dream _swore_ he heard his voice turn into something more crackling, more _robotic,_ and his eyes _flicker_ for an instant.

It was probably just his imagination, though. Or the lack of sleep catching up to his brain.

“Look, man. It’s a drug from Japan, eh? It’s- this technology thing that’s planted in your _brain_ and-”

“There’s no way this QUIP thing will just magically make me popular,” Dream responds, yet the way he said it made it sound like something of a question.

“SQUIP,” Quackity corrects. He looked crazy with excitement. Out of control. “And yes, it does. How do you think I climbed from rock bottom to the top of the food chain in a matter of weeks?”

Dream’s eyes widen.

No, it had to be a coincidence.

“Whatever,” Dream says with resolve. He didn’t want to stand in this bathroom an instant longer, and he certainly didn’t want to listen to Quackity’s shenanigans. “Have fun with your psychoactive Japanese drugs. I’m getting to first period.”

____________________

Dream hated how he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

He hated how he was so lost in his own wandering mind that the clock seemed to tick by at a snail’s pace until he delved into his pondering of whether or not he should look into this illegal drug from across the world that he hardly noticed when the math teacher had been waving for his attention for the past thirty seconds.

Second period physics was no better; his knee didn’t seem to stop wanting to jump up and down as he was practically buzzing with energy and worry. Why did the very ridiculous word of _SQUIP_ make him react like this? Why did he have such an itch to be recognized? To be popular?

(That question would be answered very shortly as the moment the lunch bell rang and Clay scampered from the classroom to become part of the sea of students in the hallway when suddenly, he saw her.)

Sofia.

She was beautiful.

She was smart, funny, a little shy but so, so adorable. Ever since they were freshmen, Clay had had his eye on her. He remembered the day he sat in the audience for the play, the only reason for his attendance being that he would get extra credit for his English class that he had a very poor grade in at the time. He remembered sitting there with George, whose head was on his shoulder as he’d fallen asleep after Intermission. And he remembered looking at the stage to see a beautiful, glowing girl with an even more glowing smile. Dark, short hair and bright brown eyes made her look like a warm being, like someone who would give really nice hugs. But see, Dream was a coward when it came to love, so he had never even spoken to her, and spent his days sulking ever since.

But here she was, in the hallway, and just as he was contemplating whether or not it would be weird if he waved at her, he felt her eyes on him. His heart stopped. This was it. This was the moment when Sofia would ask Dream on a date and they would fall in love and it would be _so awesome-_

And then she pointed at his backpack with those thin, perfect brows raised in question.

“Why does it say ‘Boyf’ on your backpack?”

Dream literally froze. He was frozen. He blinked twice before he finally said, “I, uh- um-”

Once he decided he had humiliated himself enough, he let himself be swept up in the river of people making their way down the hall and into the cafeteria.

Life hated him today. It had grabbed him by the shoulders and chucked him out a window.

Or, in other words, he felt like the biggest user on the planet as he dragged his feet along to the familiar path to the stuffy, people-filled cafeteria.

____________________

Sometimes, it all was too much.

The noises of all the people eating and talking reverberating off the linoleum floors and too-close-together walls that made Dream feel claustrophobic and antsy all at once.

But, as he met George in the same spot they met every day for the past years (the little table in the back corner where no one really bothered them), all George had to do was take one look at him to say “let’s go outside.”

Dream’s shoulders had sagged in relief as he followed his friend out the back door and outside on the grass where they technically weren’t supposed to go during lunch hours, but multiple times the school gardener had eyed them, shrugged, and left them alone.

So, they got out the picnic blanket from the back of Dream’s car, laid it on the grass and basked in the comfortable silence that surrounded them. No Technos to terrify him, no Sofias to make him feel like he was the biggest dunce in the world. Just him, George, and the gummy snacks George had grabbed from the grocery down the street during his free period. They weren’t even that good, but it was an unspoken tradition to eat them together.

“So, what’s wrong?” George asks eventually. Dream felt George’s knee bump against his, causing him to turn his head to the sky and face his friend. They were laying on their backs and staring at the bright sky and the few puffy clouds that slid across it. Dream decided it would be useless to deny the fact he felt down as George knew him so well.

“It’s not a big deal,” Dream says nonchalantly. George raises a brow at him. “Okay, fine, today really has sucked so far.”

“Wanna ditch?” George offers plainly. It was Dream’s turn to raise a brow at him,

“We both know you’re too scared to do that.”

They both laugh at that (unfortunately, that statement came with a story that included almost being caught by a teacher, needing to hide _under_ Dream’s car, and resulting in George to never, ever want to attempt ditching again).

“I just feel like… we’re kind of losers.”

George nudged him again. “And? What’s wrong with being a loser?”

Dream looks at him in absolute disbelief because all he can hear is Quackity’s voice in his head saying _you’re kind of a loser, Clay,_ and an even louder voice that said _until I got a SQUIP._

“I don’t know, nobody noticing us?”

“What, like _Sofia?”_ George teases, his British accent breaking for a moment in a weak attempt to mimic Dream’s voice.

“Shut up,” Dream mumbles, smacking George’s shoulder in a way that made the other snicker at him. “But… yeah, I guess. And even though no one notices us, they bully us just for existing at the same time.”

“Well…” George sighs a little. “Who cares? High school sucks, big deal.”

“ _Big deal,”_ Dream mocks as he sits up to look down at his friend, who looked back up at him from where he lay on the blanket. Little yellow flowers were nestled in the grass around the blanket, serving as a nice back drop. The sunlight streamed on George’s face in a way that made his eyes glow gold for a moment before he held a hand to the sun to block it from his eyes. He stared for too long to be normal.

“Look,” Dream says hurriedly as he looks away from George’s face and points to his bag, “today, Techno decided to take this sharpie and-”

Then he freezes.

As soon as he looked at his own lime-green backpack with the BOYF written across it, he looked at George’s bag to see, to his own surprise, that it had also been defaced with the letters R-I-E-N-D-S.

With how their backpacks were lined together, the message was quite obvious.

BOYF-RIENDS.

“Are you fucking joking?” Dream bursts. He senses George sit up next to him, take one look at the backpacks, and throw his head back in a laugh.

“Who cares, Dream?” George says as he was laying down once again. “We have each other, right? So who cares about those- assholes who are trying to get a rise out of us?”

Dream looked at George in awe.

_We have each other, right?_

He fed this fact to the rabid, hungry voice in his head. A voice so hungry it enveloped his own.

____________________

The voice only grew as the day went on.

Lunch ended, and the conversation about not wanting to be a loser fizzled out as George had convinced Dream that he should be less hard on himself about being “cool and shit” as George said it.

And maybe, just _maybe_ the day would’ve ended _fine_ if it weren’t for the clipboard in the hallway as discovered after third period.

The clipboard felt like a siren’s song, pulling Dream in from across the hallway as he saw it clear as day: PLAY SIGNUPS HERE!

Or, as Dream liked to call it, a free pass to getting called gay.

Which was _fine._ It wasn’t like Dream had anything against being gay. _He_ just wasn’t gay.

Definitely not.

But that was aside the point. The _point_ was that a very familiar name was signed on the first line of the signup sheet.

Sofia. Written in beautiful, cursive writing with the dot in the “i” marked as a little heart.

Possibilities flashed before Dream. If he managed to get into this play practice, maybe Sofia would notice him. Maybe he would be able to be her friend and break that awkward, never-ending distance between their two worlds.

As he picked up the pen dangling from the clipboard pasted to the wall of announcements, he hadn’t even noticed that his feet had lead him over to the sheet until he pressed the pen to the paper to supposedly write his name.

He hesitated.

But then he wrote it. Big, bold, messy letters.

_Dream._

“Gay!”

Dream whirled around to see fingers pointing at him. Even if it was only one person who stood behind him and probably only muttered it under their breath, it felt like so much more. It felt like the entire hallway was staring at him, pointing, and laughing. Using their unspoken words as daggers to throw at him, using their unused glares to bore holes into his weak resolve.

_I don’t need to be popular._

_I only need George._

He felt like he needed to get out. Like he needed to cup his hands over his ears and run out of that hallway and get in his car and drive until this school was a distant memory.

But instead, time continued onward, and the person who had whispered the single, fateful word to him continued walking on and into their own world.

Dream made his way to his fourth period class with an ink stain on the side of his hand, and a very heavy-feeling phone in his hand.

 _Text Quackity,_ the voices told him. _Do what you know you need to do._

 _I don’t need to be popular,_ he said back to himself, _I only need George._

But the light was going out. His own voice was being buried in ones that didn’t belong to him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mostly a lil filler chapter before we're back to the plot :p I promise I'll post the last chapter of my other work soon hehe

**_George_ **

Life in England was fine, but life here was much better.

George would never forget the day they met. It was the day after he had moved from Brighton and his room was empty aside from the stacks of untouched cardboard boxes filled with his belongings.

He decided to explore around the cul-de-sac they lived on out of sheer boredom in hopes he would run into someone his age that he could spend the remaining month of the summer with. He discovered many differences between here and England: the cars were on the opposite side of the street and the speedometers on the car were in miles per hour. And it was bizarre to come to a place he called home when everyone else had accents that didn’t match his own.

George discovered that not many kids (or people, for that matter) walked down the sidewalk at nearly seven at night when the sun was just beginning to sink past the horizon. There was a slight breeze, nice enough that it was perfect weather to be out here. George was fine with being alone.

He wasn’t alone for long, though.

After walking for a good few minutes, George encountered a park and busied himself with counting the number of dogs he passed on his way there (he reached a grand total of four) and by the time he walked down the pathway of the lush, green-grass park, he discovered that he was very, very bored.

And very, very lost.

The poor kid was only fourteen. He didn’t even have a phone yet, but what he did have was a sad amount of social anxiety that made his hands shake from where they were in his pockets, and made his eyes dart left and right to see if he recognized anything. It was useless. The houses were all cookie-cutter with two stories and shutters and slightly different shades of gray or white. He was panicking, there was no doubt about it.

Should he knock on someone’s door and ask to call his parents? What if he got kidnapped?

So, George did the most _logical_ thing.

He climbed a tree. Like some sort of cat as the true irony was that he _hated_ climbing down. His impeccable logic of this action was that he swore that he could see this park from his bedroom window, so maybe if he climbed up this huge-ass tree, he could catch a glimpse of his house and walk in that direction. Yeah. Great plan, George.

“What are you doing?”

The voice was completely calm, and in no reason triggered George’s response, which was to screech, lose his grip on the very unstable branch he had been perched on, and frankly fall out of the tree. Like a fucking acorn or something.

“Holy- are you okay?!”

George finally turned around from where he sat hunched on the grass he had fallen onto and was currently cradling a throbbing ankle in his hands. He didn’t have any noticeable injuries from the fall, but his ankle certainly didn’t like that fall.

And, as soon as George turned around, he saw the culprit of his fright. A boy, likely his age, who was unfairly tall and had sandy-blonde hair that captured the last of the sunlight in the sky, like he was some angel or something.

“Yeah,” George lies, but he stays on the ground and gawks up at this boy.

“Woah, you have an accent?!” the boy replies. He didn’t seem to mind that George was still just sitting on the grass. “Are you- like- British? Australian?”

“British,” George confirms. Something about the boy’s enthusiasm about such a simple thing was remarkably endearing.

“Woah,” the boy says again. “Well, sorry for scaring you. What were you doing up there, anyway?”

“Well…” George begins, bringing his knees into his chest and flinching slightly at the pressure on his ankle, “you see, I got lost… and I’m meant to be home before the sun goes down, so I was trying to get a better view of the houses to see if I could see mine from there.”

“Ohh,” the stranger replies. He sits down beside George with a small smile, and now that they were closer in proximity, George could really see his eyes. He couldn’t tell the exact shade if he tried, but it looked really pretty when he sun hit his face like that and illuminated his eyes as if they were jewels. “Well, you can come back to my house if you want, and you can call your parents from my dad’s phone.”

George gulps. “It’s fine, I don’t want to be a bother-”

“You won’t be a bother!” the boy insists. George relaxes. There was something about the finality of his voice that made him believe him. Most of the time, George wouldn’t argue, but he wouldn’t believe whoever was trying to reassure him, either.

“Let’s go, then, it’s almost dark,” the boy says, and he stands in an instant before he offers his hand out to George. For an instant, George hesitated to take it.

He didn’t noticed he had been quivering before until his hand was in this boy’s, and as if by magic, all quivering stopped.

But there was one tiny problem.

“Ow,” George mutters as he’s brought back to his feet, where he stands, kind of, immediately balancing on one foot.

“Are you okay?” stranger boy responds, his brows raised in apparent concern. George decided that lying, at this point, would be futile.

“I think I twisted my ankle,” he says weakly as he looks down at his ankle that already looked as if it was swollen. George gave a small sigh, yet readied himself to continue walking on because there wasn’t any other option that didn’t bother this guy more than he already had.

“Hop on my back,” the boy answers breezily.

Who _was_ this guy? Why was he so nice?

George gawked at him. “No, no, it’s fine-”

“Come on,” he urges. “There’s no way I’m letting you walk on that. And I’m the one who scared you enough to fall out of the tree. And you’re pretty short, anyway-”

“Hey!” George was laughing, though, because this boy was laughing, and it was so contagious.

But, George ended up listening to him without much though, and linking his arms around the boy’s neck and allowing himself to be carried. He rested his chin on top of the boy’s head and felt as hands secured around the backs of his knees. When George was a kid, he used to hate when his older brother would want to give him piggy-back-rides because he always felt like he was going to fall.

But right now, he didn’t feel like he was going to fall at all.

“What’s your name?” George asks as they walked along, through the park and eventually back to the sidewalk that George had followed in the first place. He was starting to recognize some of the cracks in the pavement.

For a few moments, there was a silence that lead George to think he somehow made it weird, or that he ruined the delicate bond that had formed. He opened his mouth to apologize, but the boy spoke first.

“Sorry, did you say something?” the boy asks. “I kind of… space off sometimes. It doesn’t mean I was bored! It happens randomly.”

“Oh,” George answers. “That’s cool.”

“Sorry,” the boy sighs, “I know it’s annoying.”  
“No! I think it’s cool,” George insists.

“Really?” The boy’s voice was filled with disbelief.

“Yeah,” George answers with full confidence. “It’s like… you can daydream whenever you want to, right?”

“Yeah,” the boy answers unsurely.

“That’s pretty awesome, don’t you think? What were you daydreaming about?”

In an instant, the uncertainty of the boy’s voice evaporated as he prattled on about what he had been spacing off in thought about, which apparently was the dilemma of whether or not water was wet which then made him think of the water trick in Minecraft which then made him think of different variations of fish tanks he could make in his Minecraft house. And George listened with full excitement because it was so easy to be excited when this boy was excited.

“I kind of talked a lot,” the boy reflects.

“I liked it,” George answers.

They’re quiet for a while, the only sound being the distant chirp of cicadas and squeak of bats in the distance, and foot steps on pavement. Now and then, the boy would stop to hoist George higher on his back before he continued onward.

“Oh,” George says, breaking the silence. But for once, he didn’t feel so timid about doing so. “I asked your name, if that’s alright.”

“My name’s Clay,” he answers without much hesitation. “But I don’t like it much.”

“You don’t?” George responds. He frowns slightly as when Clay stops to adjust him a little higher on his back, his chin bumped against the top of his hair. It smelled like mint. How was that fair? He was a teenage boy— he was supposed to smell like old deodorant and lack of sleep.

“No,” Clay goes on. “It feels… kind of boring, you know?”

“Yeah… how about Dream, then?”

“Dream?” Clay inquires.

“Because you daydream sometimes,” George goes on. He can practically feel Clay light up but he’s quick to add, “you don’t have to, though, if you think it’s stupid-”

“No! No, it’s cool!” Clay- no, Dream replies. “It feels like a secret identity, you know? Like a code name.”

“Yeah,” George answers.

“Dream,” he repeats to himself. “Do you wanna know why I daydream so much?” Dream blurts suddenly.

“Yeah, sure.”

“It’s- called ADDH, or something. I kinda forget.”  
“ADHD?”

“Yeah, that sounds right.”

George is quiet for a bit before he says, “my brother has that.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. He daydreams a lot too.”

Some more silence.  
“What’s your name?”

George smiles, genuinely, “George.”

It felt like the beginning of a new life, that moment. That moment where he clung onto this stranger’s back, a stranger who would become his best friend for the high school years they were yet to embark on. Little did he know that he would spend the remaining month of summer knocking on Dream’s front door that he would be soon to memorize the slight chipped paint of, and the door lock that only unlocked if you jiggled around the handle and nudged it open with your knee. The funny thing was that somehow, they wound up being next-door neighbors with adjacent bedroom windows on the second story that faced over a picket fence. Sometimes at night, George would shine a flashlight through his window for it to show up in Dream’s room as a signal that he wanted to sneak out and go to the park to watch the stars.

(Dream’s dad and George’s parents were well aware of this habit, but they thought it was too adorable to get in the way of.)

____________________

“No, no, fuck, no-! Dream! DREAM!”

“Come here, George!”

“NO! DREAM! HALF A HEART! HALF A- AAAAAAAAAAAA-”

The context of this situation is Dream and George playing Minecraft (what else?) in which Dream was trying to prevent George from getting to the end of the game by being an absolute pain in the ass.

The two were sitting criss-cross on George’s bed and clicking away furiously at their Xbox remotes. George was shrieking, which wasn’t exactly a rare occurrence, because Dream decided it would be funny to place lava right where George was about to land from his perch in a tree.

Inevitably, the half of George’s screen on the Xbox came over with read with the trademark _You Died!_ in bold across the screen.

“Dream! I’ll kill you!” George shouts, to which Dream only laughs so hard he clutches his stomach yet expertly avoids the swing George took at him with a pillow.

“I’d like to see you try, shortie,” Dream quips back, to which he gets a full smack in the face with a pillow for.

“Ha, take that, tall-ass,” George retorts. Dream shoots him a playful glare.

“I’ll get back at you, short-ass.” But he didn’t. Instead, he flopped to lay back on George’s bed and stare at the ceiling with the little stick-on stars that George remembered sticking on the ceiling with him when they were fifteen.

He remembered the context of that incident. George would often spend the night at Dream’s house, yet one Friday night, he asked if he wanted to stay over at his house.

 _“It’s embarrassing,”_ Dream had said. _“I don’t wanna say it.”_

 _“I’m not going to judge you,”_ George had laughed, but his words held meaning.

 _“I have trouble sleeping in other people’s houses. I have bad dreams.”_ Dream’s voice had sounded shameful, sad, even, so sad that George insisted he come over the next night, because he had a plan.

So, together, the two stood on George’s bed and, on tip-toes, they pasted the sticker-stars on his ceiling.

 _“There,”_ George had said as he switched off the light when it was time to sleep, _“now whenever you feel scared, you can open your eyes and see stars. Because you don’t have much trouble falling asleep when we’re outside, right?”_

The first night, it didn’t work as George woke up with Dream clinging to him the next morning. But the next time Dream slept over a few weeks later, it worked. And ever since then, it hasn’t been a problem.

Now, looking up at the sticker stars, George noticed how they were very faded, yet the memory was still bright as ever.

He looked over to Dream, who had already fallen asleep, Xbox controller still clutched loosely in his hands.

Sometimes, George had nightmares that ranged from a bad math quiz grade or of Dream leaving him. And, in the few events when he was too shaken up to go back to sleep, Dream eventually coaxed him into calling him during those nights. Every time, Dream would talk to him over the phone until George fell asleep.

But, on nights like this, where when George would open his eyes, he would see Dream and his heavy, blonde lashes closed, and the distant glow of his star stickers illuminating his face, he didn’t have nightmares.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter makes me think of the song "best friend" by rex orange county


End file.
